22 Jan Big Pharma, and the AMA vs Holistic Health Care

Holistic health care has a much longer history than allopathic medicine, going all the way back to Hippocrates. Yes, that’s right. Hippocrates was a Naturopth. What we call “Western Medicine” did not exist until the first plague outbreak in Byzantium in the 11th Century. At that time, Catholic monks and nuns cared for the sick, when no one else would. They still used mostly holistic methods, but soon begin to try other modalities for treating disease and injuries. The first Western Medical School was founded in Salerno, Italy in the 11th Century. Holistic Health was still the major type of health care practiced until the middle of the 19th Century. Surgery became more common then, mostly due to the use of firearms. Crude by todays standards, gun shot wounds were routinely treated by amputating the limbs, cauterizing wounds and other barbaric practices that were often worse than the wound itself. Germ Theory had made it’s appearance, but instead of relying on time-proven holistic methods to prevent and treat infections (which had been around for 1000s of years), companies were formed to patent chemicals, that might kill germs, and reap huge profits. It wasn’t long before the fledgling pharmaceutical companies gained enough power to buy politicians, control medical schools through grants and funding, and formed a union, the American Medical Association, to control doctors, and make sure they used the drugs, rather than holistic methods. This ‘association’ continues today, with hospitals, medical schools, and drug companies holding a virtual monopoly on Health Care in the US, and they are making inroads into international power through the United Nations. They even were able to get the government to form an administration, the FDA, who’s actual function is to stifle competition with big pharmaceutical companies.

If you doubt this, I call your attention to the 2004 ban of Ephedra, which is really nothing more than the Chinese herb Ma Jung, used for centuries to treat allergies, colds, and other respiratory problems. The active ingredient is a common component of over-the-counter allergy medicines….at 20 times the cost. Ma Jung works by increasing blood flow, and metabolism slightly to calm the body’s allergic reactions. It does increase blood pressure, and heart rate slightly due to a release of adrenalin. In a normally healthy person, this is not a problem. But, as often happens, there are those who will abuse anything, and true to form, some people decided that increasing their metabolism would help them lose weight, and be better athletes, and so they took massive over-doses, and 100 people died, either directly, or indirectly from heart attacks and strokes. During that same time, 280,000 people died as a direct result of prescription, and over-the-counter drugs, yet none of these were banned. And a Federal judge later lifted the ban on Ma Jung.

But isn’t there enough business to go around? Why can’t they just leave it up to the patients to choose what kind of care they pay for? The answer is simple…..money! Chronic diseases aren’t really ‘treated’, but ‘managed’. Doctors, hospitals, and drug companies make tons more money by treating your symptoms with expensive drugs and chemotherapy for whatever time you have left, than if they came up with a cure. There is no financial motivation to find complete cures.

In fact, drug companies develop drugs without any particular purpose in mind, other than finding a patentable formula. They find a use for it later. You might be shocked to learn that the common blood-thinner drug, Warfarin, marketed under the name Coumadin, was, and still is, marketed as a very potent rat poison…..You read it right…the medication they prescribe for you is a rat poison. It wasn’t marketed as a medicine until rats began to develop immunities to it.

The drug companies have enough money and political clout to get laws passed to eliminate the competition, and insure that we remain over-drugged, and docile. Herbs cannot be patented, and they cut into big pharmas business. So they get laws passed to limit your access to Holistic Health, and use the AMA, FDA and other organizations, including the UN, to make sure their drugs keep a large market share.

One of their favorite tactics is mis-information. You may have heard on some ridiculous websites like quackwatch.com that holistic treatments do not work. This is pure baloney, since most of them have been used successfully for 1000s of years, and we’re obviously not extinct. Any research that shows that herbs are beneficial is discredited. And no one is financing herbal research in the US., because most research money comes from the drug companies. Consider this; Chinese workers have the least access to ‘Western Medicine”, yet they have the longest life-span on average, of anyone else on the planet. In fact, if their own government doesn’t kill them, they have a very good chance of breaking the 100-year mark, and being healthy right up to the end. By comparison, the U.S. comes in at a dismal #36 in life-span rankings, even behind some Third-World countries. Can you see a pattern here?

Don’t get me wrong. Most doctors do what they can for their patients, but they are often restrained by protocols and medical politics. And there is a time and a place for everything. Especially in the field of Emergency Medicine, allopathic practicioners do outstanding work, barely short of miraculous in some instances. Where allopathic medicine has a problem is with chronic illnesses that do not respond to drugs or surgery. Common-sense goes a long way towards your health. For example, if I have an accident and cut off my hand, I don’t want a cup of herbal tea. Get me to an Emergency Room ASAP and have them sew my hand back on…..But if I am suffering from arthritis, and standard treatments are not working, then it may be worthwhile to explore some holistic options (and there are many that work well…I use them myself…).

But if the drug companies have their way, you won’t have those options. Get in touch with your elected officials and let them know that you demand a choice. And if you are not registered to vote, please, please, please register, and participate. Otherwise, you are part of the problem.